On January 27 2011, I took my last drink. It was a can of Guinness Extra Stout. In the preceding years, I must have drunk thousands of them but that was my last one and I have drunk nothing alcoholic since that date. Alcohol nearly killed me and did kill people close to me. I think I am extremely fortunate that I have been able to stop, and I am lucky to be alive.
In October 2015, I moved from Northern Ireland to London to leave my chemical demons behind and to find work. After a few months, I became homeless because of financial reasons. I didn’t have enough money to pay the extortionate rent in North London, so I spent a couple of weeks at a friend’s house near Colchester before finding homelessness charity Emmaus at just the right time.
I had been sober for over four years by that point and I was ready to embrace normality. This is a feeling that I had never known, either in a mental or emotional sense. I feel like I always had an edge, and that there was always disharmony in my life meaning that I could never settle. Sobriety has taught me so much, and it is not an exaggeration to say that I would be dead had I not stopped drinking. The longer I have remained sober the more I have learned about myself, about the world, and about people.
Through recovery, I eventually started to meet other alcoholics and it was then that I began to understand that alcoholism was not about me, it was about millions of people rather than isolated individuals. If something is affecting hundreds of thousands or millions of people, then it is no longer an individual issue. This realisation was the very thing I needed to get sober because it took the pressure off me – it wasn’t about me anymore and that made getting sober much easier. Addiction is not driven by choice like many would believe, but a myriad of factors and stopping it is not a matter of clicking your fingers, it is more complicated than that.
Being sober for a long time brought the kind of peace that I needed, and that peace has only grown since being at Emmaus.
I stayed at the Colchester community for nine months and during that time I really did take to the ethos of Emmaus. Emmaus doesn’t just give people somewhere to stay, it motivates them. Having regular work, more than enough food and a place to live offers people like me the means to live comfortably while they make themselves ready to go back out into independent living. They offer the chance for people to undertake courses, and thanks to Emmaus Colchester, I was able to renew my passport and use my travel allowance and holiday to fly back to see my family in Ireland.
In September 2016, while still at Emmaus Colchester, I attended the 25th Anniversary of Emmaus in the UK at the Cambridge community. Straight away, I knew that I wanted to live, work and be part of the Cambridge community, and in November 2016, I moved from Colchester to join the Emmaus Cambridge community.
I stayed in Cambridge for nearly 5 years and while I was there I achieved an awful lot. I had already been sober for more than 5 years before that but while I was there I reached my 10-year milestone, 10 years of complete abstinence, 10 years of a life that was unimaginable to me. At one point I didn’t think I would make it past thirty-five and to be honest, the way I felt back then, I didn’t want to.
I was given a huge amount of love, respect and trust by the companions, staff, trustees and volunteers of the Emmaus Cambridge community. I ran the logistics department, I was also involved in a lot of fundraising as well as talks and poetry readings. During that time, I wrote two books, No Homeless Problem which was published in 2017 and which can be bought from Emmaus shops across the country as well as online and in bookshops. Then during the first lockdown in March 2020 I put the finishing touches to ‘Ten Years Sober’, which is currently being considered for publication by publishers in Ireland (fingers crossed!).
The people who live and work in Emmaus Cambridge have been instrumental in how well I am doing today. No one does anything on their own, we are each a product of our environment and success very often comes because we have good people around us. I spent nearly 5 years in the Cambridge community surrounded by good people who supported, encouraged and loved me and who helped me to achieve everything I have achieved. I could give you a list of names, but those people know who they are. Humanity is not about individuals it is about community; it is about the strength we acquire by our togetherness and in Emmaus there is a form of togetherness that is unparalleled.
Just before the 2020 lockdown happened I was of a mind that I should move on, that I should leave the community and find my way elsewhere but then COVID hit and I was forced to knuckle down and get on with whatever needed to be done. In April this year I started talking about setting myself up to leave and just as that was happening an opening came up for a Residential Support Worker at Emmaus Norfolk and Waveney. I knew people in the Norfolk community as it had been one of the communities I visited to write No Homeless Problem and I had done readings there as well. I applied and I got the job and that is where I am now, writing this in the Norfolk countryside.
My life nearly ended more than once all those years ago when I was drinking and drugging every day and going around in desperate circles locked within a cycle of my own unintentional making. But I got out of it, finding a strength within myself and a good group of people who looked out for me gave me everything I need to grow. This has meant that I have been able to get to a point where I can use my experience to help other people who may be caught up in circumstances like those I was once caught within.
I am very grateful for what I have now because there are many people who have nothing. I went through a period of emotional uncertainty so I know what it is like to be without and to struggle. All over England and beyond, hundreds, if not thousands, of people are safe and warm and have relatively comfortable lives that would not be possible without Emmaus.
